They want to use SVG because they haven't figured out how to just use an image twice as big and scale it down to support hi definition displays, like everyone else in the entire industry has been doing for ages now. And because they like to torment people. I tried to build SVG icons for SeaMonkey and quickly discovered that there just isn't ANY good software out there for building the files and Photoshop's SVG support and conversions suck, so you have to train yourself around not only the limitations of SVG to begin with, but then you have to train yourself around the limitations of the software that generates the files, and then you have to train yourself around the limitations of the browsers. How that is easier than a double-sized PNG is a great mystery to me. I gave up. Had some damn nice icons built too.

Here, Ed, looks like your stuff will be OK. I've always known I could scale down very large icons down to smaller sizes, without much problem.

What I didn't know exactly was how to tackle the rest of the UI. So..I did a proof of concept on it -

Not pretty, but it tells me what I wanted to know - Icons/images can only be scaled down (much too fuzzy otherwise), but you can get away with scaling up the rest of the UI. Good.

Btw that was 3 lines of .css to do that.

*************

As for the subject in hand, I already know as well as Mozilla do, exactly what they are going to do after Complete Themes are whacked, so what's the point of this token reach-around stuff. Just get on with it already!

Sorted.

Just finished the HIDPI proof of concept on the toolbar buttons and it works! Yaaah! I figured there was a way to do this without turning all images into cartoon svg shapes or duplicating every single .png into larger sizes.

Well, there is and it's good for 220% original size. It begins to go downhill much past that, but 200% was all I needed. Ed would be better off with using large.pngs and just scaling down for his smaller theme range, though.

If you want to see what your stuff looks like on HIDPI then about:config > layout.css.devPixelsPerPx and set that to 2.

Don't know why I bother to do this stuff, not like anyone cares. I suppose I do it 'because it's there' or something.

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)

Here, Ed, looks like your stuff will be OK. I've always known I could scale down very large icons down to smaller sizes, without much problem.

What I didn't know exactly was how to tackle the rest of the UI. So..I did a proof of concept on it -

Not pretty, but it tells me what I wanted to know - Icons/images can only be scaled down (much too fuzzy otherwise), but you can get away with scaling up the rest of the UI. Good.

Btw that was 3 lines of .css to do that.

*************

As for the subject in hand, I already know as well as Mozilla do, exactly what they are going to do after Complete Themes are whacked, so what's the point of this token reach-around stuff. Just get on with it already!

Sorted.

Just finished the HIDPI proof of concept on the toolbar buttons and it works! Yaaah! I figured there was a way to do this without turning all images into cartoon svg shapes or duplicating every single .png into larger sizes.

Well, there is and it's good for 220% original size. It begins to go downhill much past that, but 200% was all I needed. Ed would be better off with using large.pngs and just scaling down for his smaller theme range, though.

If you want to see what your stuff looks like on HIDPI then about:config > layout.css.devPixelsPerPx and set that to 2.

Don't know why I bother to do this stuff, not like anyone cares. I suppose I do it 'because it's there' or something.

Congratulations! Will the HIDPI still work when the devs pull the rug out from under the current full themes? I have to set layout.css.devPixelsPerPx = 1 instead of -1 to get the themes to work on my setup. Don't know why. I've never tried layout.css.devPixelsPerPx = 2.

Yup. Put up Aeon Jumbo and tried about:config layout.css.devPixelsPerPx =.5 and layout.css.devPixelsPerPx =.8. The latter was about Aeon Big. With asppropriate notifications, this would allow a single theme with multiple sizes. The only thing would be to warn people to resize the content of their pages, since layout.css.devPixelsPerPx = x does not restrict itself to chrome.

ehume wrote:Congratulations! Will the HIDPI still work when the devs pull the rug out from under the current full themes?

Thanks. Well, HIDPI is going to be around, the only question is how well it'll take off.

I know I still have some Firefox themes around, but these days I'm theming new stuff for SeaMonkey and Thunderbird. SM alone will be around for at least a year with their ESR and, being blunt, even if both were to fold after that, this stuff never goes to waste. Whatever you're theming on in the future, you'll still need to do an easy route on this as the default program is not going to do their buttons and yours as well.

Trouble is, atm it's not yet widely used, so it's not worth my 'proper' time for the small % of users who would need it. So, I just had to come up with an easy, but good solution for now, i.e. double the size of the existing images without usual fuzziness.

If it really takes off then good isn't good enough and I'd use fractal interpolation techniques on my existing graphics to get that side to 'very good'. I'm not going down no feeble svg images route, that's for sure. That would take time though and it's not easy to do, so I needed a good interim position and now I have.

Yeah, your route has to be different - you've got 100% of your large button users staring at those buttons 100% of the time - you need your top dollar quality icons in the biggest sizes, without doubt. Then use the CSS3 command transform: scale to resize the same buttons down for your other, smaller button, themes.

Transform scale is a good stable command that will scale down without quality loss. I've been using it now for almost 3 years for my 'Small Icons' Mode (SM still does large and small) and it never goes bizarre on me.

Don't worry about the UI font size on HIDPI displays proper, I'm pretty certain that gets picked up and adjusted by the OS system font sizes automatically.

Last edited by Frank Lion on May 8th, 2017, 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)

ehume wrote:Yup. Put up Aeon Jumbo and tried about:config layout.css.devPixelsPerPx =.5 and layout.css.devPixelsPerPx =.8. The latter was about Aeon Big. With asppropriate notifications, this would allow a single theme with multiple sizes. The only thing would be to warn people to resize the content of their pages, since layout.css.devPixelsPerPx = x does not restrict itself to chrome.

I might be wrong, but I can't see your users being happy about doing about:config adjustments and rescaling their content. Reckon make one really big theme and transform scale down for the others themes. That way they would work 'out of the box' for the users.

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)

The only thing you have to remember is that you put the scale on the .toolbarbutton-icon and not the ID button itself. Otherwise, you end up scaling down the .toolbarbutton-text as well and that looks pretty grim. Guess how I know?

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)

OK. Now I'm being told my theme is legacy. I have looked at some of the new stuff and it appears . . . interesting. However, when I unpack the two omni.ja files they appear to be updated versions of the old theme files. Some of the old button names must be changed, but otherwise the landscape looks the same.

Q1: How do I package the updated files. It looks like a zipfile rename ".ja" Is it?

Q2: What should the directory structure look like inside of the zipfile(s)?

Q3: Am I missing something?

Q4: Has Mozilla published something (I'll admit I am bad at search engine logic) outlining making themes for Firefox? Especially on how to modify an old theme to work with the new Firefox.

If it helps, although Firefox 57 comes out in mid November and that doesn't support Complete Themes, it may be useful for you to know the Firefox 52 ESR version will continue and be security update supported until summer 2018.

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)